<p>CollegeBoundCA, what does that mean?</p>
<p>from the initial date you had to designate a school as #1, there are several times the “rosters” are sent to schools with the names of the kids who designated THEIR SCHOOL as #1. Some schools won’t send you the detailed offer letter about their full-ride or full-tuition scholarship packages until/unless you list their name as #1.</p>
<p>BUT some schools have competitive scholarships, so even if you “qualify” you may not be one of the lucky ones who GETS the full-ride NM money.</p>
<p>SO…for those of us who NEED a full ride package, you have to put your favorite school as #1 for the first roster…and get their package details/offer in the mail…then switch their name out to your 2nd favorite school in time for the next roster mailing…etc etc…so that before May 1 you <em>hopefully</em> have a few packages that you can choose from that are affordable. THEN switch to the FINAL CHOICE before the last roster goes out.
Then there are exceptions. Many schools which have the competitve NM full-ride scholarships REQUIRE that you keep them on #1 listing the whole time to actually receive the $ in the end…and I had to eliminate them from my choices because I NEED THE MONEY more than I NEED TO GO TO THEIR SCHOOL.
Finances are driving much of my choice at this point. </p>
<p>Does this make sense?</p>
<p>I was under the impression that once you received a NM scholarship offer from a college, you couldn’t get one from another school by switching.</p>
<p>From NMSC:</p>
<p>NOTE:
If NMSC receives notification of a change in college choice from a Finalist after mailing a college-sponsored Merit Scholarship offer to that student, the Finalist cannot be offered another college-sponsored Merit Scholarship award. This applies even if the new choice of college is one that also sponsors Merit Scholarship awards.</p>
<p>what you say has truth, mamabear, but it’s all in the lingo. what you’re talking about is the “college sponsored” NM scholarship which is $2k annually or something like that. Money that NM doles out or that corporations dole out THROUGH the NM program.</p>
<p>What I’m talking about are full-ride (tuition, fees, books, room, board, etc) scholarships that a college offers to NM Finalists…but it’s not part of the NM scholarship program, per se. Colleges have their “drop dead dates” where you have to have them listed as #1 by that date, or their previous offer is null and void.</p>
<p>THe NM corp can not manage or control what a school offers in the way of full ride programs (read their website), but only with the (I think piddly) $2K annual offers of money. Heck, that barely pays for books and a parking permit nowadays.</p>
<p>It’s not well-publicized, but if you read between the lines and ask a lot of questions, NM funding becomes a big game of strategy.</p>
<p>mamabear, that’s true for official NMSC awards. The large awards some schools give are not official NMSC awards, and the schools set their own deadlines.</p>